Fitness Tips: Reminder time

by David Garred,
Club Manager Dusit Resort Sports Club.

Howdy Campers.
Your Fitness Tip for this week is short and simple.
It’s time for an increased effort. That’s right, for those of you who have been regularly doing some exercise and want your body to start to really change or to simply continue changing, then it is time to up the exertion a little.
Try to keep in mind that muscles - whether they are the body’s external or skeletal muscles or your internal muscles like the heart or diaphragm - are very efficient. They adjust to the load that you place upon them, they take around two months to achieve this and once they reach this requirement, that is it, they stop. You stop improving.
If you continue with the same effort level your muscles will cease to change.
This is great for those of you who are happy with your body/fitness level/strength level. All you need to do to maintain your present level is do the same things week in week out. From time to time try something else for the sake of fun but basically, if you do the same things to the same level, then you will stay right where you are.
On the other hand, if you want to improve something about yourself, then now is the time to add a little extra to your regime to keep those muscles adjusting.
If you are at the stage of walking 2 times per week for 20 minutes then let’s not go too far. A practical and goal oriented increase here would be to walk 3 times per week for the same 20 minutes. Attempted marathon running would be going well and truly overboard.
For the Fat Burners out there, try adding a little extra activity to your cardiovascular programme, add a little extra time for sweating or maybe give light weight training a try.
For the Strength Trainers, try new exercises, slower lift speeds and certainly some more weight.
For the Fitness Trainers, give interval training a try. Here you spend short amounts of time exercising at greatly elevated exertion levels with longer, lower efforts in between. The lower efforts should be more like an “Active Rest” period where you do the same activity but slow down so that you get a chance to “Stop Puffing”.
For those of you who just want to feel and look a little better try a combination of all three mentioned above - be careful on each of the Strength and Fitness sides of things.
Ask yourself “How much do I want to improve” and if the answer is something along the lines of “More than Anything” then,
Carpe’ diem.

Fitness Tips